Why did they all have to tread so very delicately around Celeste's money? It was like wealth was an embarrassing medical condition. It was the same with Celeste's beauty. Strangers gave Celeste the same furtive looks they gave to people with missing limbs, and if Madeline ever mentioned Celeste's looks, Celeste responded with something like shame. "Shhh," she'd say, looking around fearfully in case someone overheard. Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world.

On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who from the rocks of Gibraltar, the stony gateway of two worlds, watched the ship vanish into night and storm, could hardly distinguish from behind the snow the innumerable fiery eyes of the ship. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but the ship was even bigger, a many-storied, many-stacked giant, created by the arrogance of the New Man with his ancient heart.

Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.

Christ, back in Chicago, we don’t make bicycles any more. It’s allhuman relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out newways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what;and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accusesus of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates thebicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.”“And you think things will be better in San Lorenzo?”“I know damn well they will be. The people down there are poorenough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have somecommon sense!

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

I live in a world in which 40 men control wealth equal to that of nearly 80 countries, where to maintain their hegemony, countless acts of mayhem and massacre must occur every day. This is the reality that forms and reforms my days as it does those of all people on this hapless planet. I do not think any more that writing - mine or another's - can change the world. Perhaps in their small way, writers can answer for those who are voiceless in their extreme deprivation and suffering, but at best, in the very smallest scheme, writing can provide a moment of grace, both for her who writes and him who reads, in a very dark world.

Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich are on a level with any of us nowadays. Money buys position at once. I don't say that it isn't all right. The world generally knows what it's about, and knows how to drive a bargain. I dare say that it makes the new rich pay too much. But there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. It is the romance, the poetry of our age. It's the thing that chiefly strikes the imagination. The Englishmen who come here are more curious about the great new millionaires than about anyone else, and they respect them more. It's all very well. I don't complain of it.

Some people create war and misery, some create wealth and money, and some create ideas and art. But we all create our own deaths, fashioned out of our lives. Nobody will remember how you died, if nobody remembers how you lived. Forgoing freak accidents, we all choose how we die by how we live. Suicide, old age, AIDS, Cirrhosis of the liver, our deaths tell of how we lived. And even in a freak accident, if we are worth remembering, our lives will overshadow our deaths. If Henry Ford had gotten run over by a Mercedes, people would still remember him as the driver of the hit and run that changed history with his automobile assembly lines.

I've never understood it,' continued Wilfred Carr, yawning. 'It's not in my line at all; I never had enough money for my own wants, let alone for two. Perhaps if I were as rich as you or Croesus I might regard it differently.'There was just sufficient meaning in the latter part of the remark for his cousin to forbear to reply to it. He continued to gaze out of the window and to smoke slowly.'Not being as rich as Croesus - or you,' resumed Carr, regarding him from beneath lowered lids, 'I paddle my own canoe down the stream of Time, and, tying it to my friends' doorposts, go in to eat their dinners.' ("The Well")

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.

Annie giggled again. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. And when she did, the most incredible thing happened. Alex’s grin vanished, and after gazing down at her for what seemed to her several endless seconds, he got tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. Only that, just a simple “thank you.” But to Annie, those were the two most wonderful words she’d ever seen spoken, and they meant more to her than a thousand others might have. With them, he told her a wealth of things, namely that he had meant everything he’d said to her in the attic, that he not only wouldn’t punish her for making noise, but that he wanted her to.

Many people have got caught up in the belief known as the “Law of Attraction.” They believe that by their thoughts, affirmations, and other “attraction” exercises they will become wealthy. However, the Tanakh wisely says, “In all work there is profit, but mere talk produces only poverty.” (CJB, Proverbs 14:23). Only through work it is possible to produce results that create wealth and simply talking about wealth will not produce any results. The idea that wealth can come through thoughts or affirmations is a fantasy. “A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies ends up in poverty” (CJB, Proverbs 28:19).

Love makes us wake up in the morning with a sense of purpose and a flow of creative ideas. Love floods our nervous system with positive energy, making us far more attractive to prospective employers, clients, and creative partners. Love fills us with powerful charisma, enabling us to produce new ideas and new projects, even within circumstances that seem to be limited. Love leads us to atone for our errors and clean up the mess when we've made mistakes. Love leads us to act with impeccability, integrity, and excellence. Love leads us to serve, to forgive, and to hope. Those things are the opposite of a poverty consciousness; they're the stuff of spiritual wealth creation.

All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

Before criticize common-known thieves severely, think for a while that maybe you are thief, too. Believe me, there is no special distinctive feature that enables us to determine who is a thief. Only the way to earn your bread can determine it. So at first count your legal income and then your wealth. If there is any difference between them, it means that you have illegally taken something that does not belong to you. There is no God or any other supernatural being, or mystic phenomenon such as fate that gives you extra wealth. There is no material thing in reality that belongs to nobody and waits only your way. You can name it in different terms, but it is robbery in its pure form.